Focus Mobile Quarterly Mobile Insight for Automotive Marketers is now available for free download.

Download Full Report:http://www.focusmobile.co.uk/docs/StateMobileUKJan2012.pdf

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Focus Mobile Quarterly Mobile Insight for Car Marketers is now available for free download.

Download Full Report: http://www.focusmobile.co.uk/docs/StateMobileUKSept2011.pdf

You can also sign up for free monthly updates by clicking the link on the right.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS), has just released new data showing that 45% of all UK internet users used a mobile device to go online in 2011, when away from the home or the office.

This includes 6 million people who have accessed the Internet on their mobile for the very first time in the last 12 months.

This trend is seen across the board. 64% of 25-34 yr olds and 49% of 35-44 yr olds accessed the Internet via their mobile phone.

But, unsurprisingly, the youngest group, 16-24 yr olds, access the Internet on their mobile vastly higher than the national average, coming in at 71%.

All of these stats are significantly up from last year.

There is no doubting that for some, the mobile is becoming the primary means of accessing the web. There are a few reasons for this.

1. Hand-me-downs are fairly common, which is why I think the youngest group demonstrate the highest access levels. Pocket money and first job wages have not suddenly jumped. Mum, dad or older sibling has upgraded to…

1. Designing content for varying screen sizes

Screen widths of internet enabled mobile devices range from 178px right up to 840px, and new sizes are coming out all the time. It is impossible to design for them all. Create a strategy around the sizes you are targeting, or the device(s), and develop an optimised experience for those specific sizes. Some sizes are more dominant than others so choose which of your customers you want to give the best experience to and design for them first. You should also employ the graceful degradation philosophy – your site, even…

The branded mobile landscape is pretty interesting at the moment.

We are seeing plenty of mobile executions – mainly apps - that support campaigns.  They can generate bursts of attention for brands that can at times give an extraordinary short term impact.

We are also seeing enterprise level applications that relate directly to the very business of the brand. These often include m-commerce – opening up a new sales channel, very successfully for the most part.

But there’s something missing in the mobile landscape– the longer term marketing engagement, it’s what I call the “Consideration Gap”.

The Consideration Phase

What is the consideration phase? It’s a term used to describe the period between the desire and purchase of a product. It’s used by car marketers in particular because it’s so important in their marketing efforts.

If you’re in the market for a shirt priced at £20, your consideration phase is around 10 minutes. In the mobile world, you jump on Marks and Spencer mobile site, buy it and it gets delivered or you pick it up in store.

If you are buying a car however, the consideration phase can be 6 to 8 months. It’s a big decision,…

Although mobile marketing has developed in leaps and bounds since Crazy Frog launched in 2005, when I tell friends that I work in mobile marketing, I can see they think of me, and my company, as a scourge on society.

We’re not. That’s because we work to the self-imposed mobile code of conduct.

1. Don’t spam

Don’t send unsolicited, outbound SMS messages. Ever. It doesn’t work in print, email or on your landline. It’s certainly not going to work on your customers’ mobile phone. Mobiles are intimately personal. Do not invade that trust or space with unnecessary or badly targeted promotions.

2. Become trusted

The flip side of not spamming is that you will become trusted. If you only send out information when asked for it, customers will accept and appreciate your communications. This will bleed into other aspects of your business and will ensure that your mobile community is genuinely interested in your offerings, truly engaged and more likely to evangelise your service to others.

3. Include opt out STOP messages

This is a legal requirement. Always include an opt-out option with a STOP message at the end of each message. If customers do reply STOP, send them a confirmation message so they know it has worked. And…

…well I am at the moment.

Let me clarify that –

Working with the automotive industry to develop mobile strategies, mobile web and applications, I feel compelled to use a vaguely auto-related analogy.

When it rains in Formula One, the strategists on the pit wall say that the right decision is to be on the right tyres for that lap, that moment in time. In other words, don’t try to guess what the weather’s going to do in 10 minutes because you’re likely to slide off into the kitty litter in the meantime.

There’s a huge debate in the mobile world around whether to deliver your brand to mobile on Apps or the Mobile Web.

Here‘s my take on this: Apps and Mobile Web (or HTML5) can do pretty much the same things right now. Let’s take that as read for now. (Yes, I know that apps can use location better, can receive notifications and make use of the device’s competencies – accelerometer for instance).

But, as a speaker at a recent Mobile Monday event said, choosing between Apps and Mobile Web is like a carpenter choosing between and saw and a hammer – they both are very…

In this post, I will try to go through some background and the recent, current and ongoing transformation that we are seeing in the mobile phone landscape. I will show how the market has changed dramatically in the last two years, and make some predictions as to how it is likely to change over the next year or so.

Back in 2000, when the first smart phones launched, the market was dominated by five big players with a background in classic mobile phones, or what people now call feature phones.

Early smart phones were mostly based around the Symbian operating system and either Sony Ericsson’s UIQ or Nokia’s Series 60. In most markets, phones were launched through telecom operators, and these had a huge say in what functionality would be available on their customers’ handsets. Developing applications for these smart phones was expensive; you had to buy expensive hardware, enroll in development programmes; it was a process that would only work for established software companies.

Even Research in Motion (the company behind Blackberry) required the installation of proprietary enterprise class software to support their phones.

The market continued…

Hello and welcome to the Focus Mobile blog. Let us tell you a bit about ourselves, and what you can expect from our blog.

Focus Mobile was founded in 2010 by Tony Bean, Stephan Nedregaard and Isaac Warshal. We were working in the mobile space and saw an opportunity that we thought needed special attention. We felt the automotive industry has been neglected by the mobile industry for too long. We are here to right that wrong.

Between us we have been working in the mobile and automotive industries for 25 years.

We will be bringing you the latest news and information from the auto and mobile worlds, sprinkled with our some of our own thoughts, letting you stay up to date on both industries. From new products and technologies, our latest research, and interesting articles to opinion pieces you can’t get by without.

So, leave us a comment, get in touch with us or follow us on twitter. We’d love to hear from you.

The Focus Mobile team